A Music Academic's Blog. Ethnomusicology, South African Choral music, Anthropology, Gender, identity, technology, academia, travel, and general notes as I progress with my graduate studies and research projects.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Wow, there is such a general negativity doing the rounds about graduate study and academia in general. This is one article advising enthusiastic graduates of all the possible problems with the whole process, and it is only one of several. Is it really likely that by continuing on my present path, I am toying with self-destruction? perhaps. But quite honestly, I want to do this so badly, I'm prepared to risk it. Just hope I can avoid becoming embittered.

I really want to feel like I am doing some good, and contributing to my society in a valuable way, and when my research turns up results as interesting as it has been recently, I feel like I am. Tell you what, though, I hate the publishing process, and yet I can think of few other ways of making what I do accessible to the broader public. Perhaps this is the way to do it. Maybe blogs are the ultimate way of getting what I do out into the public sphere. And yet, with absolutely no traffic up to this point, I am beginning to wonder...

Still, if this all falls down around me, at least I can conduct choirs. I'm really getting quite good at that. And what makes me particularly smug about it is that someone who offered to help me learn that spent half a year trying to convince me that I was useless at it. well ha, ha, miss embittered school teacher, I will not be trod on! positive thinking, naively romantic do-gooders still get it right more of the time.

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About Me

I am a PhD Candidate in Ethnomusicology at New York University (NYU).I obtained my Bachelor of Music degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2005, and was music director of the Johannesburg Chamber choir until mid 2006. I have sung with the National Youth Choir of South Africa, and the West Gauteng Youth Choir, among others in South Africa, and I currently sing with the Canterbury Downtown choir in New York. In addition to singing and conducting choirs, I play piano, organ, various recorders, penny whistle, mbira and uhadi, and once upon a time played bassoon.